Viggle Acquires GetGlue

Second-screen app Viggle (think FourSquare for TV watchers, through which you can "check in" to your favorite shows) has acquired AdaptiveBlue, the developer of popular mobile social app GetGlue, for $25 million and 48.3 million shares of stock. It is, in a lot of ways, a match made in heaven—Viggle is aggressively ad-supported and monetized, while GetGlue has nearly triple the wealthier company's user base (3.2 million GetGlue users to Viggle's 1.2 million). Viggle has expanded its portfolio to allow check-ins for ads, as well as shows.

If you suspect that this means GetGlue will soon be sporting advertisements, your suspicions are correct. "You could imagine that in the near term we'd be looking at ways to expand our advertising platform into that user base," Greg Consiglio, Viggle's president and COO, told Adweek. Consiglio said that a big part of the reason for the merger was the lack of shared users between the two companies. "We loved the idea that you could combine two brands and not have a lot of overlap between the user bases," he said.

The deal is dependent on, among other things, "Viggle receiving gross proceeds from a convertible debt financing equal to or greater than $60 million," according the company's 8-K filing (hat tip to TechCrunch for that tidbit). "Viggle has received indications of interest and commitments from various strategic investors with respect to its convertible debt financing," the filing said.

There's a great deal of speculation about who those investors might be—another technology company, perhaps? Social TV has been heartily embraced by both content producers and the wider Web community, and it's not hard to think of a number of interested parties.

Second-screen app Viggle (think FourSquare for TV watchers, through which you can "check in" to your favorite shows) has acquired AdaptiveBlue, the developer of popular mobile social app GetGlue, for $25 million and 48.3 million shares of stock. It is, in a lot of ways, a match made in heaven—Viggle is aggressively ad-supported and monetized, while GetGlue has nearly triple the wealthier company's user base (3.2 million GetGlue users to Viggle's 1.2 million). Viggle has expanded its portfolio to allow check-ins for ads, as well as shows.

If you suspect that this means GetGlue will soon be sporting advertisements, your suspicions are correct. "You could imagine that in the near term we'd be looking at ways to expand our advertising platform into that user base," Greg Consiglio, Viggle's president and COO, told Adweek. Consiglio said that a big part of the reason for the merger was the lack of shared users between the two companies. "We loved the idea that you could combine two brands and not have a lot of overlap between the user bases," he said.

The deal is dependent on, among other things, "Viggle receiving gross proceeds from a convertible debt financing equal to or greater than $60 million," according the company's 8-K filing (hat tip to TechCrunch for that tidbit). "Viggle has received indications of interest and commitments from various strategic investors with respect to its convertible debt financing," the filing said.

There's a great deal of speculation about who those investors might be—another technology company, perhaps? Social TV has been heartily embraced by both content producers and the wider Web community, and it's not hard to think of a number of interested parties.